


blood stains the soul

by opalitegalaxy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Allusions to WW2 and nazism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, More tags will be added!, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:15:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22350937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalitegalaxy/pseuds/opalitegalaxy
Summary: Your job description was simple: hunting and eliminating fugitive war criminals, be they high ranking officers or mere cogs in the machine. Motivated by a powerful sense of justice and the strength of your bloodline, you never shied away from the violence - no target too old, too feeble, too insignificant. A new job once again has you packing up your life and moving halfway across the world to find one man. Simple enough, until your pathway into the lions den, his son, breaks through the fog of vengeance and makes you question your morals, your superiors, and your entire way of life.
Relationships: Eren Yeager/Reader
Kudos: 12





	blood stains the soul

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't wrote a damn thing since october. The well had run dry and I was left with nothing but a bunch of sad, half-assed notes in my drafts. Last night I was smacked in the face with a sudden surge of energy and this is the result. I'm no A-grade writer, but I am so fucking happy to have something to work on again!!
> 
> Anyway, in case the tags weren't clear, this story is pretty heavily inspired by the events of WW2. I debated whether to straight up call a spade a spade, but it honestly felt a little too heavy-handed to be using words like "nazi" and "holocaust" in a fanfiction. Almost a little disrespectful? I might later go the canon route and use the Eldian-Marleyian metaphor, I might leave it vague the whole way through, I'm not sure yet, but if you're uncomfortable with references to stuff like that, maybe this fic isn't for you. Maybe. Its a central theme, but its not going to be touched on in massive details constantly.
> 
> No update schedule. This is my first multi-chapter piece and I'm going to try to push myself to be semi-regular, but I can't promise anything I'm afraid.
> 
> Regardless of all that, I hope you enjoy the first thing I've successfully written in three months. <3
> 
> (P.S, sorry to Grisha for kind-of, sort-of horribly mischaracterizing him. I needed a scapegoat and he was closest lol.)

You loved your job.

It was often tedious, included a whole lot of waiting, more hours spent in the air in the tight confines of economy-class flights than you cared to count, endless late nights spent bathed in the blue-light glow of your laptop - but by god, you loved it. That was the only thought in your mind as you waited for the pot to boil, already on your fourth cup of sweetened coffee that night. It was a hard job, physically and mentally taxing, but you were grateful not to be one of the millions that loathed clocking in every morning. To stand where you stood was a privilege. An honour.

After all, how many could say they hunted war criminals for a living?

Taking a quick sip of coffee - and subsequently burning your tongue due to impatience, typical - you settled back down at your desk and huffed. There was some level of organisation to the tornado of papers that covered the surface, but for the life of you, you just could not recall it. An immigration document was here, and over there was a birth certificate. John McElroy. Beatrice Lambert. Kathleen Miller. Isabella Russo. _Garbage. Crap. Didn't I already look at this one?_ Another one, three, ten, joined the reject pile growing at the base of the table. Alice Lee. Billy Taylor. Alexandra Kokkinos. Lars Van de Vijver. Yaara Rosenstein. Over and over and over again.

You blinked. And then your eyes started streaming.

With a hiss of frustration, you dug your knuckles into your sockets until flickering stars began to fill the empty blackness. A headache was coming on; your own stupid fault. What kind of idiot stops blinking for five fucking minutes? The table rattled as your phone vibrated. Spam emails, nothing to worry about, but the brightened screen caught your attention. 3:22AM. Perhaps it was time to stop. First thing tomorrow you were getting ring binders and sticky tabs and organizing every last scrap of paper you had on hand. Alphabetically _and_ geographically.

You grabbed your now-cooler coffee and wrapped your hands around the mug, bringing your knees to your chest and propping your chin up, finally letting the near-painful tension drop from your shoulders.

You probably weren't going to do that. Not tomorrow. Or ever.

As the minutes ticked by, your eyelids grew heavier, exhaustion pulling them closed and your own stubbornness yanking them open again. 3:37AM. It was definitely bedtime. Necking the last dregs of your drink, you pushed the chair back and stretched, bending and contorting your spine back into proper alignment and groaning with relief as your muscles protested.

Grisha Jaeger.

Right there, by your feet, sat a lone slip of paper.

Grisha Jaeger.

You knew that name. You knew it. Like you knew the feeling of a fever settling into your bones. Like you knew the overcast skies signalled a bout of rain. You knew it. Be it precognition or the insanity of sleep deprivation or the invisible hands of some wild force of nature, you knew it.

By 3:39, you were tearing the apartment to pieces, convinced you were one step away from a hit. The adrenaline had your cheeks burning up and your hands shaking like an addict in withdrawal but you kept on, dragging one box after another into the open living room and scrutinizing every name, every photograph, every little detail until you caught him.

A court document, an ID card, and immigration papers, neatly stapled together.

Grisha Jaeger. Male. Brown hair. Blue-green eyes. AB positive. Posted at the eastern border.

Cut the ears off of children. Produced homemade bombs and left them on the steps of schools. Stole money and other personal effects from the corpses of deceased civilians. Destroyed identification documents. Two counts of rape. Endless unsanctioned killings. All the evil of the world condensed down into the body of one singular man.

The sour taste of bile crawled up your throat; you'd have puked had you not worried about soiling such precious evidence. The words became blurred as your hands shook almost violently; the excitement was gone, displaced by blind fury. Sometimes, on the nights when you couldn't sleep, you would wonder if you were doing the right thing; if killing really re-balanced the scales of justice. You'd ponder whether the nature of your job meant you were adding more bad into the world rather than removing it; outside of war, these people had moved on with their lives. They had children and spouses and friends. They worked and paid bills and loaned their neighbours cups of sugar. Without a nation behind them, they were perhaps no different than yourself. Are some people inherently cruel, or did the heat of the battlefield turn otherwise normal people in monsters? Was it temporary insanity, or an prime opportunity to force their brutal curiosities onto innocents with state approval?

Such nuance had no place in the present. There was no space in your mind for philosophical wondering, not when you were so suddenly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of the violent fantasies you worked endlessly to suppress. You willingly drowned in the dream of knives carving flesh, of a broken voice screaming to your ancestors for their forgiveness. A forgiveness you would deny him - along with the mercy of a quick death.

Mechanically, you stood and marched over to the abandoned desk, snatching up your phone and stabbing at the screen until you had the right contact. You paced impatiently, almost wearing a hole in the polished laminate flooring, until you heard the click of the call finally connecting.

"Grisha Jaeger. Mother's maiden name was Lorenz."

"Spell that out for me." The voice on the other end of the call was calm, as always. Always, always, _always_ so sweet, so level-headed, so calm in her anger. Sometimes it was a point of envy for you. Right now it was a source of disgust.

"J-A-E-G-E-R."

Silence. You sunk to your knees, clutching the table edge for balance, as you waited. The weariness in your bones took over with a terrible vengeance as the fight-or-flight phase came to its end. There was no fight left in you, just a subdued sense of despair.

"You have a live one."

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is welcome, as always!


End file.
